Only around 69 million people are expected to escape extreme poverty between now and 2030 – almost half of the 150 million who achieved this feat between 2013 and 2019, according to a new report by the World Bank. This is because the fight against poverty, which lost traction over five years ago in many countries, has been diluted by the effects of COVID-19 with people in low-income nations being poorer than they were before the pandemic, slow growth and the shocks arising from climate change and ongoing conflicts.
Based on the current pace of the battle against poverty, the World Bank has stated that over 600 million people will still be extremely poor by 2030. Nearly 700 million people, which is over 8% of the world’s population, are very poor. In view of the findings of the poverty, prosperity, and planet report, the sustainable development goals target of halving the number of people living in poverty by 2030 is out of reach.
More than 70 countries in Africa, East Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean currently share over 70% of very poor people and almost 40 of these countries are in sub-Saharan Africa, which is home to 16% of the population in the world. In this region, close to 70% of people will be surviving on less than US$2.15 a day by 2030, which is the World Bank’s definition of extreme poverty.
In upper middle-income nations, where poverty is defined as living on less than US$6.85 a day, over 3 billion people are poor which is more than 40% of the world’s population. The number of people living below this standard in these countries has scarcely changed for over 30 years as a result of population increase.
It is worth noting that the number of extremely poor people fell from almost 2 billion in 1990 to less than 700 million in 2019. However, across the same period, the world’s population expanded by close to 2.5 billion people, and the number of people living above the global poverty line rose from less than 3.4 billion to 7 billion.
This saw the percentage of people living in extreme poverty being slashed from over 37% to less than 9%. The majority of very poor people were concentrated in East Asia and South Asia at the time but rapid growth has enabled these areas, including China and India, to lift more than one billion people out of extreme poverty between 1990 and 2024.
Over the same period, Africa achieved progress in education, health, gender equality and female political representation. Further progress has been experienced in these areas in the first half of the implementation period for the current sustainable development goals, but the continent still struggles in its efforts to reduce poverty.
A lack of decent jobs, income inequalities, weak social protection systems, a large number of people, mainly women, in unpaid work, and environmental degradation, including forest loss, are partly responsible for the little progress made to reduce extreme poverty in the region.
With six years to the end of the implementation of the sustainable development goals, African countries, which are now spending more on loan repayments than vital sectors such as health and education, are also diverting resources from their budgets to deal with climate disasters.
Africa has the biggest share of people at high risk of disasters arising from climate change, while Asia is home to the largest total number of people who are vulnerable to the same risks. Going forward, the World Bank now states that the growth strategies of these countries need to promote inclusive growth and protect populations from climate calamities to try to get anti-poverty efforts back on track and sustainably lift more people out of poverty.
